The reading wars: the next chapter
Kaitlyn Lundy, News Editor
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com.
The “reading wars” are making their rounds again currently due to staggering reading test scores. According to the New York Times, “National test scores last year showed that only a third of American students were proficient in reading, with widening gaps between good readers and bad ones.”
The reading wars, a debate originating back to the mid-nineteenth century has resurfaced yet again in today’s education system. The reading wars make up two sides; those who believe that literacy is achieved through phonics, (in which the sounds of letters or groups of letters are correlated and taught), and those who believe literacy results from the concept of whole language (in which students learn by being given good literature of interest and by picking up on overall context).
Harvard alumnus and literacy intervention expert, James S. Kim reveals the origin story of the reading wars, saying, “Horace Mann, the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, railed against the teaching of the alphabetic code – the idea that letters represented sounds – as an impediment to reading for meaning. Mann excoriated the letters of the alphabet as ‘bloodless, ghostly apparitions,’ and argued that children should first learn to read whole words.”
Phonics however, varies greatly in technique, in which students participate in exercises enabling them to recognize the sounds that each letter makes in order to then form the whole word and result in the discovery of the meaning.
According to the American Public Media (APM) reports, “For decades, reading instruction in American schools has been rooted in a flawed theory about how reading works, a theory that was debunked decades ago by cognitive scientists, yet remains deeply embedded in teaching practices and curriculum materials. As a result, the strategies that struggling readers use to get by — memorizing words, using context to guess words, skipping words they don’t know — are the strategies that many beginning readers are taught in school.”
Therefore, according to research over the years, the overall literacy of students would improve if phonics was integrated into curriculums more, however, it is more expected to see lessons with a central focus on memorization and deciphering the context of text.
Grace Barrows, sophomore early childhood education major with a minor in ASL shared her opinion on the topic, saying, “I personally think there is a time and place for each tactic. And sometimes both used together.”
She went on to say, “As an advocate for the teaching of signed language I also cannot ignore the amazing reading abilities I have seen in both hearing and deaf children who are taught their ABC’s with their hands. Using your hands when learning uses a different part of your brain than just learning to see and say your ABC’s. I have seen children at the age of 5 on a 3rd grade reading level.”
Therefore, the literacy of young readers would improve with a sharper focus on phonics within the education system. It may also be helpful for educators to consider integrating ASL into the curriculum as a tactile approach to learning the English language. These tactics do not negate the importance of students finding a love of literature and therefore expounding on their literacy levels. As the National Education Association (NEA) Task Force says a thorough reading curriculum is “analogous in several ways to a balanced diet.”
